Answer
Organisms do not use the first steps of meiosis because meiosis is specific to the formation of germ cells, just as mitosis is specific to somatic cells.
Work Step by Step
While meiosis and mitosis are both used in the formation of cells, mitosis produces somatic cells and meiosis produces germ cells. During mitosis the maternal and paternal homolog (or chromosome) form a diploid cell. In this cell, they duplicate and line up individually on the metaphase spindle, after which the sister chromatids are separated by the anaphase portion of the cycle. The two resulting daughter cells are diploid, meaning they contain two sets of chromosomes, one paternal and one maternal. These daughter cells are identical to the cell they originated from.
Meiosis however results in four haploid (one chromosome in the cell) daughter cells that are nothing like the original cell. This is because the germ cells are the sex cells, meaning they hold the genetic material. During meiosis the germ cell containing one paternal and maternal homolog duplicates the respective chromosomes, but then pairs them and links them together before separating them into the four distinctly different cells. In this way, the formation of the germ/sex cell differs from the formation of the somatic cell because the somatic cell's formation does not require the chromosomes to be linked to form a new organism, it simply replicates the existing homologs.
